I'm not sure if this is down your alley or not, but I use a great product called SecondCopy for a similar purpose. I don't really run "backups", per se, but rather keep a shadow copy of my data on another

I'm not sure if this is down your alley or not, but I use a great product called SecondCopy for a similar purpose. I don't really run "backups", per se, but rather keep a shadow copy of my data on another drive. For instance, at home I use (3) drives in a RAID 0 configuration and I use SecondCopy to copy my important files onto a separate IDE drive in my system -- just in case the RAID goes belly up. At work, I use it to copy my websites onto a Jaz drive each night. In both cases, I have the software setup to shadow the destination against the source. In other words, if files are deleted out of My Documents, then they're removed from the "backup" drive as well. SecondCopy has many, many options, though, and may work just great in your situation! It can also be setup as a service, should you need that.

I recommend using Backup Express, as it gives you the option to select in which type you want the backup made, even in ZIP form! This is very useful, as you can read the backup on every system. Of couse, other backup possibilities are also included, such as timed, non compressed etc...

I've absolutely run it during the day! The backup jobs haven't seemed to affect the system at all *except* for the initial job which has to copy ALL of the files over to the destination. For instance, if you're keeping a shadow copy of 'My Documents', then the first time you run the job is has to copy everything from the folder to the backup drive. That can take awhile, obviously. After that it just copies whatever files have been added or changed (or deletes files, if necessary), so it really doesn't tax the system. You can also adjust the process 'priority', if you like, so that it copies faster (with more CPU usage) or slower (with less CPU).

As for the previous mention, SecondCopy can also perform .zip archives, if you prefer.

Download it and give it a whirl!

Chumplet

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